Reprieve
by Mel88
Summary: Life after death was no simpler than life before it. A sequel to "Life After Grief."


**Author's Note** : This is intended to be read as a sequel to my fic "Life after Grief." This ficlet contains some MAJOR SPOILERS, so if that's no problem for you, read on. If it is a problem for you, may I suggest you go check it out? This story can be read as a stand-alone, but it will make much more sense with context. Thanks to my beta, eilonwy, who took time out of her finals prep and "Wizard of Oz" movie night to tidy up my writing.

This was written for the 2015 Dramione Advent fest, hosted on AO3. My prompt was "ice skating."

 **Reprieve**

Draco Malfoy laced his fingers behind his head and reclined in his chair, staring out of his office windows at the crisp winter sunset. Amazing, how vivid it was tonight. Orange, pink, and purple blasted across the cloudless western sky, the east sinking into an inky blue so dark it felt eternal.

He did not care for the east so much: he had come out of his own eternal darkness not one month ago, and the memories of his rebirth were chaotic and confusing. Everything became nothing, and in the span of another lifetime – a reality of two minutes – nothing was everything once more. Blurred sights, thundering sounds, pungent odors, pressure and pain, and through it all, a familiar, albeit tortured, voice screaming his name, growing fainter the closer he came to true consciousness.

He shuddered at the memory, his heart's heaviness a product not of his own suffering, but the suffering his infection, death, and subsequent resurrection had caused his mother.

And the suffering he had willingly caused the woman he loved.

The sun disappeared behind a horizon of tall pines, and Draco swiveled his chair so that he faced his open office door. The short hallway leading from it was dark, as was the office catty cornered from his. He sighed and rose stiffly from the chair. His mind suffered more than his body from the aftereffects of the Collier's infection, but that was not to say his body was as it had been. His bones grew stiff after long periods of immobility and the muscles in his legs spasmed, making him uncharacteristically clumsy. His Rehabilitation Healers were confident that both conditions would fade with time; he had noticed only mild improvements.

Taking a rueful moment to check his balance, Draco made his way through the building in which he grew his business. As this was a new venture, his empire was a modest one. His private fortune seeded the project, allowing him to rent this single-story country affair and staff it with one quiet physicist, two gregarious, practically incomprehensible engineers, two full-time potioneers, and one disgraced Junior Healer. Draco had plans to grow his business, but research and development was too expensive to finance alone, even if he drew from his family's deep coffers. The result was days spent courting investors, reviewing safety audit reports, liaising with potion regulatory experts, and fending off his team of advocates, who seemed to think he was violating someone's patent every alternate day. It was exhausting work, but the benefits of success – which included an increased fortune, being considered a hero, and having at least one piece of life-saving technology named after him – were nigh incalculable.

He followed the faint, orange flicker of candlelight to the laboratory in which his disgraced Junior Healer was hard at work. His approach was near silent, but he doubted she would have noticed had entered with a full orchestra.

Hermione Granger bent low over a laboratory bench, a notebook resting flat upon it. She held the pages open with her left hand while her right twirled her wand, which stirred the potion before her. Her dark, curly hair was clipped back, revealing her crinkled forehead and intensely focused eyes. She was trying – in vain, it seemed – to decipher a note she had made months ago during her frantic search for a Collier's cure.

Never had Draco seen someone so bathed in firelight. The candles behind her created an orange-yellow aura above her head and behind her body, and her face glowed from the potion's fire before her. She looked as though she were lit from within, radiating tranquility despite her expression.

In that moment, Draco forgot the aches in his body and the guilt he carried.

In that moment, he knew that dying was the best thing ever to happen to him.

"Draco?"

His breath caught as she turned toward him, hitting him with the full force of her inquiring eyes. He smiled – he could not help it – and walked toward her.

"How's it going?" he asked. He laid his hand on her shoulder, feeling tension, and he knew her answer. He kissed the top of her head, breathing in the scent of her hair as she exhaled her frustration.

"I don't know what I did," she quietly confessed. "I was trying everything, working so quickly, and these notes are worse than useless." She flipped her old notebook shut and leaned back in her chair, her eyes closed. "I am worse than useless."

It was an oft-heard refrain. "I'm not going to bother explaining how wrong you are," Draco said. "Instead, I'm going to tell you what you've told me regarding my rehabilitation: Keep at it. Don't give up. You can do this."

She pulled away from him. "This is different."

He Summoned a chair and sat down opposite her, taking her hands in his. "This is exactly the same. Hermione?" She turned toward him, but refused to meet his eyes. " _The same_."

She frowned, unconvinced.

"You know why I started this company?" Draco asked.

"For profit," was her answer, but her mouth quirked up in the barest hint of a grin.

He grinned, too. She was not so consumed that she had lost her sense of humor. "And to help people. You cured me, which means you can cure others."

"It's taking longer this time."

"And?"

"And people are dying!" She was snapping to life now; Draco kept pushing.

"The circumstances are different. It's been less than a month. You have more time and less pressure. You have to work more methodically. You have lackeys to supervise, inventories to maintain –"

"All the time and resources I could ask for," she cut in, "and, ultimately, no excuses for not producing results."

Draco's shoulders slumped as her voice fell back into a monotone. There would be no convincing her tonight, which meant they would more than likely spend the rest of it in uncomfortable silence – brooding on her side and dejected on his. Life after death was no simpler than life before it.

"Let's go home, Hermione."

"I can't."

"And why the devil not?" he snapped, suddenly annoyed that even their silent evening together would fall to the wayside.

"I need to gather some ingredients."

"Ingredients?" he repeated, incredulous. "What could you possibly be missing? We've purchased nearly the entire stock of Slug and Jiggers' for you. We've matched, if not exceeded, what Mungo's had in stock."

"I know what you've spent on me," she bit out. "I'm concerned about freshness."

"What happened to your Muggle techniques? Wasn't that how you were successful in the first place?"

She answered between clenched teeth, her anger growing. "I told you, they're not working. I want to try a few potions to get some space from the project."

"Very well." Draco flicked his wand a bit harder than necessary. His winter cloak flew toward him from his office, sounding like an overgrown bat as it hurtled down the hallway. He caught it before it could upset a single scroll of parchment on the lab bench.

"Get your cloak," he said stiffly. "Let's get going."

Hermione's tired brown eyes moved between his cloak and his face. "You don't have to come," she said. Her hesitant tone and continued inability to meet his eyes helped him understand what she was really trying to say:

She did not _want_ him to come.

His cheeks flushed pink with the special brand of anger that travels hand-in-hand with rejection. Her eyes darted once to his and then away again, her own cheeks flushing with the knowledge that her message had been received, poorly.

"Get your cloak." It was not a request, and his expression must have promised danger, as she did not argue. Instead, she grabbed her cloak and pulled it on herself, ignoring his outstretched hands, his instinctual offer of assistance.

Rejection number two hit him square.

"Where to?" He worked to keep his voice honey smooth. She noticed the effort, glancing askance at him as she pulled her hair from beneath her cloak.

"A lake, just north of here."

She offered her arm, and he took it, pulling her close because he knew the proximity would annoy her. She gasped from the force of it, shot him a glare, and Apparated them without a word of warning.

They landed on the edge of a forest, looking out at a vast clearing, where deeply piled snow hid the lake and reflected the moonlight. Beyond the lake lay miles of forest, so dense the light was lost inside it. Draco momentarily forgot Hermione, appreciating the stillness, the peace… It was as if he had appeared in an entirely different world, where he had never died and never fought and never wondered whether the woman at his side, whom he loved unquestionably, loved him in return.

A great whirlwind buffeted him back, and the illusion shattered as the snow was cleared from the ice. Draco whipped around to glare at the witch beside him, but she was already gone, penguin walking onto the ice, her seasonally inappropriate footwear making her incapable of strides any more confident.

"What the hell did you do that for?" His shout echoed over the ice plain, coming back at him from every angle as if whispered.

"I needed to clear the ice," she said, her tone implying that such a fact should have been obvious.

There was no more containing him. With a sharp jab of his wand, Hermione's shoes turned to ice skates. Her arms pinwheeled, and she landed on her arse with an unladylike curse.

Hermione shot him a look that was equal parts hurt and incredulity, and – damn her – he softened because of it. He magicked his own shoes into skates, glided over to her, and offered his hand. He was surprised she took it. She took a moment to steady, bracing herself on his arms as her feet slipped from beneath her.

"I've got you," he whispered, pulling her eyes to his. Silence hung heavy around them, their breath misting the space between their lips.

"What happened to us?" The question was out before he could stop it.

"Nothing." Hermione dropped his arms, drifting backwards away from him. She turned unsteadily and skated a few strides farther, looking lopsided due to her ingredient satchel. "Nothing happened to us," she said to the darkness. "We're fine."

"We're not," he said to her back. "We're different." She dismissed him with a huff; he pressed on. "You're fighting something, Hermione, and you're doing it without me. I've one million guesses what it could be." He followed her for a few strides, pausing when she did.

"You're frustrated at your inability to cope with your sacking from St. Mungo's. You're dissatisfied with your new career, with yourself, and with me. You feel guilty for saving me. You resent me. If I hadn't gotten myself infected, then you wouldn't be in this position, feeling the way you do. If we hadn't been together at St. Mungo's, you would never have felt responsible, like you had to –"

"You're wrong." Her voice shook.

A short, barking laugh broke from him. "Am I? You spend most of your days in your lab and most of your nights at your cauldron. We haven't shared a meal two weeks, and we haven't been intimate in double that. We don't talk. You don't ask about my rehabilitation, or my projects, or –"

"You're wrong!"

Her shout cracked the night, shifted it, and as she skated farther away from him, he realized that more than the silence had broken.

"Hermione, stop!"

She whirled. "No, Draco, you st–"

In a moment, she was gone, a black hole replacing the tenuous surface upon which she had stood. Inky water sloshed over the jagged, blue-white ice, and Draco's heart stuttered into overdrive as a pale hand appeared from the depths, groped at the slick surface, and disappeared.

"NO!" Draco shot across the ice, his legs pumping hard then stopping short when another, bone-deep crack threatened to take him under, too. He drew his wand and cast the first useful spell he could think of: " _Wingardium leviosa_!"

She burst from the water like a firework, water streaming behind her like smoke, her gasp for air an explosion that tore open the night. He raced toward shore, dragging her, suspended, behind him. He collapsed when he reached the snowy bank and let her fall none too gently onto his lap.

"D-d-d-d-raco…" Her pale hands shook as she reached toward him. He swore, stripping the soaked woolen cloak, now heavy as an anchor, from her body. He held her close, wrapping her in his arms and cloak alike, tucking her head beneath his chin and ensuring that as much of her body that could be touching him was.

"I… I'm…"

"Not now," he rasped. He fumbled for his wand and sent a jet of warm air at her, attempting to dry her sodden clothes.

She pressed her face against his chest and shivered.

"You're r-r-r-right," she confessed.

He had to laugh. "Any other day, I would ask for that in writing."

"And t-t-t-oday?"

He looked down at her, surprised to see that she was looking up at him, her brown eyes wary beneath wet lashes.

"Today, you get a pass," he said gently. He pressed his lips to the top of her head and inhaled, trying to catch a whiff of familiarity beneath the cold, dead scent of the lake.

"I haven't f-f-felt like myself for months," she said. "When you came back and gave me a second chance, it was like…" A strong shudder wracked her body; Draco gripped her tighter. "I'm not sure I deserved it."

"You saved my life."

"Against your wishes."

"I'm not complaining."

"That's not the point." She drew away from him, and they locked eyes. "I d-don't regret saving your life. I don't resent you, and I don't wish I'd n-never met you. But there were consequences to saving your life – breaking the rules – and anyone else at M-M-Mungo's would have had to deal with them. I didn't, and what have I done with my reprieve?"

Draco had no answer to that. How many times had he told her that she was worthwhile? That her intellect and determination would yield a cure? That it did not matter how much time it took her for to do it, because the act of trying was better than abandoning the pursuit altogether? He could repeat himself until the words lost their meaning, and it would make no difference if she did not believe it. He was powerless to help her.

"No," he whispered. She shifted beneath him.

"What?"

"I know you're frustrated. I am, too," he said, weathering her skeptical look. "I think that maybe we've been going about this the wrong way."

"And how is that?" she asked.

"We're not working together."

She let her head fall back against his chest. "I hardly think that's the problem."

"I think it might be," he countered. "How often have I heard you blather on about collaboration between Muggle science and Healing?"

"The cure I constructed for you was purely Muggle."

"Maybe the cure for _everyone_ needs to be a bit of both." He let the implication settle, biting his tongue as the silence persisted.

"You have a company to run," she protested weakly.

"The company practically runs itself," he lied, waving off her excuse. Though his business matters were indeed pressing, Draco was all too aware of how short life could be, and he had no intention of letting Hermione suffer needlessly during hers.

"I still don't see how you could help."

"And how could I hurt?" he asked, his frustration growing. "Stop fighting me, Hermione. Let me help you."

Another long silence. Her voice was tremulous as she named her fear: "What if we fail?"

"Then we fail," he answered immediately. "And we'll try again, and again, until we succeed." He lifted her chin and pressed his lips to hers. "We can do this, Hermione. Together. I promise." He kissed her again.

"Together," she repeated and looked beyond him into the night sky. Starlight reflected in her eyes, and for the first time in a month, Draco saw hope there, too.

 **The End**

 **End notes:** In this fic, Hermione is dealing with something called impostor syndrome. Sufferers of impostor syndrome feel as though they do not deserve the successes they have unequivocally earned. The feel as though they are frauds who have conned everyone around them into thinking that they are more intelligent, competent, valuable, etc. than they really are. According to research, this syndrome is more common in high-achieving women (though that's not to say that men are not affected by it as well). To learn more about the syndrome and, more importantly, what you can do to bring yourself out of it, I highly suggest Amy Cuddy's TED Talk.

And if you suffer from impostor syndrome, you're amazing and you're not alone. 3


End file.
